In clinic, arthritis can be roughly classified as osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, gouty arthritis and bacterial arthritis. These types are different from each other in the symptoms and predilection site. Osteoarthritis, which belongs to degenerative joint diseases, is the most common type of arthritis. For patients with osteoarthritis, the attack on the articular cartilage would result in not only pain but also rigidity, swelling, deformity and other symptoms. The persistence of those symptoms may cause difficulties in movement, and thus, the assistance from crutches or wheelchairs is needed.
In general, osteoarthritis primarily occurs in the joints that need to move frequently and bear weight, such as knee joints, hip joints, metacarpophalangeal joints, lumbar spines and cervical spines. The main therapeutic method for treating osteoarthritis is non-surgical therapy including drug therapy, rehabilitation therapy and hyaluronic acid injection. Surgical therapy will be performed only if the above non-surgical therapies cannot relieve the symptoms of patients.
In the aspect of drug therapy, though steroids can be used to relieve patient's pain, the use of steroids is often accompanied by osteoporosis, poor wound healing, skin thinning, upper gastrointestinal bleeding, and other side effects, and will even increase blood pressure and exacerbate diabetes. Therefore, currently, most patients with arthritis do not use steroids anymore, however, some patients with rheumatoid arthritis, lupus erythematosus, ankylosing spondylitis, and spinal trauma still need to use steroids for relieving pain. Drugs that can be used to replace steroids include nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and glucosamine. At present, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are widely used because of their analgesic effect. However, long-term use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs will cause peptic ulcer, edema of the lower limbs, impairment of kidney function and other side effects, and thus, one should be careful while using the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. As for glucosamine, it is capable of stimulating the chondrocytes in the joints to synthesize glycoproteins and simultaneously providing anti-inflammatory and analgesic effects. In addition, glucosamine does not cause the same side effects of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Thus, glucosamine has been used in the treatment of many arthritis patients. However, the clinical outcome showed that there is a considerable diversity among patients in the capacity of absorbing glucosamine, and thus, the dose of glucosamine cannot be efficiently controlled and adjusted. Furthermore, the clinical outcome also showed that glucosamine is ineffective in many patients.
When the above non-surgical therapies cannot alleviate the symptoms and mitigate the pain of patients, an invasive surgical therapy (such as arthroscopic surgery) would be the only approach for removing foreign matter in the joint cavity or repairing the damaged cartilage. However, surgery has only a very limited effect on patients with severely damaged joints. At present, it is also common to adopt artificial joint replacement as a treatment. However, the artificial joint has a limited life span, and the cost of using pure metal or ceramic artificial joints with longer life span is quite high.
Therefore, it will be of a great help to find a therapeutic method capable of providing a long-lasting effect on the patients with arthritis, especially in relieving the patient's pain, at a manner that is cost-effective, non-invasive and with minimal side effects.